1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for and a method of drying resin pellets to be supplied to a molding machine in advance.
2. Description of Related Art
Resin pellets are used as molding material for producing molded products. Water can adhere to resin pellets in the course of transportation and eventually penetrate into the inside so as to be held there in a state of bound water. As resin pellets to which moisture is adhering and/or that are containing water in a state of bound water are supplied to a molding machine for producing molded products, the moisture contained in the synthetic resin that is molten in the metal mold can become steam and discharged to the outside of the metal mold. Such steam can form stripes or the like on the surface of the molded products to damage the appearance of the products as it is discharged and the residual moisture in the metal mold can modify the resin composition to make it no longer possible to maintain the resin in a desired state particularly in terms of characteristics of the resin so that consequently defective molded products can be produced. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate moisture from resin pellets in advance and dry them when they are supplied to a molding machine.
Conventional apparatus for and methods of drying resin pellets include those described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-79840 (Patent Document 1). With the resin pellets drying method described in Patent Document 1, resin pellets to be supplied to a molding machine are fed into a drying means in advance and heated for demoisturizing and drying under reduced pressure in it.
However, with the above described known drying method, while the boiling point of water falls under reduced pressure so that water is turned into steam at a temperature lower than the boiling point under the atmospheric pressure, which is 100° C., it takes a long time to heat the moisture of resin pellets and turn it into steam so that it is not possible to achieve a high drying efficiency because the thermal conductivity falls under reduced pressure. Particularly, resin pellets are thermally insulating and it is highly difficult to heat bound water to a temperature level good for turning it into steam under reduced pressure. Therefore, it is not possible to dry resin pellets in a short period of time.
This problem may be dissolved by heating resin pellets for a long period of time under reduced pressure. Then, however, it is necessary to consume a vast amount of energy for drying them and the time necessary for drying resin pellets will become extremely long relative to the time spent by a molding machine to consume the resin pellets. The net result is a poor matching of the drying process and the molding process, which by turn obstructs an efficient molding operation. This problem may be avoided by arranging a large reduced pressure drying apparatus at a position separated from corresponding molding machines so as to dry a large volume of resin pellets at a time and distributing the dried resin pellets to the molding machines. Then, however, the apparatus is very large by definition and there arises a high risk problem that moisture contained in the atmosphere of the plant can adhere to the resin pellets that are being supplied to the molding machines along with a novel problem that such a distribution system can entail loss of resin pellets to a considerable extent.